Floridians Still Waiting for the Smoke to Clear

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. —  In the lives of humans, the drama ignited by persistent wildfires that continue to rage in parts of Florida may be unprecedented. All 35,000 residents of one county remained locked out of their homes Sunday, about 120 miles of Interstate 95--a major north-south artery--were closed for the third straight day, and people from Jacksonville to Miami were still breathing smoke.

But in the life of a Florida forest, fire is not only necessary, it’s routine.

“This is no ecological disaster,” said George M. Blakeslee, a professor of forestry health at the University of Florida. “Yes, from our perspective the fires represent great loss of value: in money, in green vistas, in recreation.

“But fire is the most widespread disturbance on the planet. And out of the ashes will be born a new forest.”

Those reborn forests may be years away, Blakeslee pointed out, and will come about only after a big assist from aggressive replanting by the forest industry, an economic power in north and central Florida. Typically, he said, about 100,000 to 200,000 acres are reforested each year in Florida. This year, said Blakeslee, foresters will have to double or triple that.

A particularly wet winter prevented forest managers from conducting controlled burns that would have suppressed the buildup of vegetation that, in current drought conditions, make much of the state a tinderbox.

Most of the valuable timber being torched in the wildfires that began Memorial Day is pine and oak, according to Blakeslee. But a true assessment of what it will take to aid regeneration of 450,000 acres of blackened forest will come only after the last hot spot is extinguished.

The timetable for that, however, is far from clear. State fire officials on Sunday looked longingly to the east at a disorganized wave of low pressure in the Caribbean that promised a chance of rainfall here by midweek. But it’s no certainty.

“If we don’t get some help from this tropical depression later in the week, we could have this high [pressure] over us and be back in a difficult situation,” said Ray Geiger, chief of field operations for the state Division of Forestry.

“We are at the mercy of the elements, as everyone understands.”

For some of those who were forced to flee their homes, the fires and dislocation are beyond understanding. “We’re only staying here until Bradmore Lane opens up,” said Denise Jacobs, 4, who, with her 2-year-old brother Dylan and parents Carol and Dennis Jacobs, was one of an estimated 1,700 people who spent the Fourth of July weekend in one of 30 emergency shelters.

Bradmore Lane is where the Jacobs lived in Palm Coast in north Flagler County. But they were unsure Sunday afternoon if their home was still standing. “I think our house will still be there, but my mother’s is gone, I’m pretty sure,” said Carol Jacobs, who fled with her family Friday to a shelter opened by the Daytona International Speedway in a vacant office building across the street from the racetrack.

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For tens of thousands of evacuees, the uncertainty over the fate of their homes translates into gnawing anxiety. Bunnell resident Carmen Patterson, 14, who also spent Sunday in the Speedway shelter, had her dog and the family cockatiel with her. But she worried about the pet left behind, a pot-bellied pig named Arnie.

“I just want to go home,” she said. “We also left behind grandma’s ashes in an urn, and I’m worried about that.”

Carmen’s aunt, Debbie Vetter, propped on a cot nearby, said that after living with choking smoke for a month, she is willing to stay in a shelter until the fires are put out. “I don’t want to go through this again,” said Vetter, 39, an asthmatic who left home in a rough-running 1986 Oldsmobile with only her medication, her nebulizer--a machine that helps her breathe--her Chihuahua Chico and $275 in cash.

“Right,” agreed Carol Patterson, 39, Carmen’s mother. “When you sit there night after night and watch flames over the tops of trees across the street, it’s a little hard to sleep.”

After two nights in a motel, the cash Vetter had to support her extended family is gone. “Thank God they opened this place up,” she said. “A chiropractor even came by this morning and gave us all a free [spinal] adjustment. Thank God.”

Many prayers went up here this morning, in churches, at impromptu services in emergency shelters and even on the marquees of fast-foot restaurants along International Speedway Boulevard. “Pray for rain” signs are also common.

Officials suggested some residents could be permitted to return to Flagler County after noon today. But as of Sunday, said Craig Fugate of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, “conditions are not safe. It’s a hard decision. But it is not safe to come home.”

Some people did go home Sunday. The evacuation orders that drove several thousand people from northern Brevard County, near the Kennedy Space Center, were lifted, and residents also began returning to some sections of Ormond Beach.

Meanwhile, many of the more than 4,500 firefighters toiling here had hoped to focus on hot spots, improve fire lines cut into the forests’ sandy soil and rest after an exhausting and dangerous week in which fires led to mandatory evacuation of all of Flagler County and parts of two others, Volusia and Brevard. But lightning strikes set off new blazes east of Orlando, near Gainesville, and even near Bradenton on the state’s west coast.

Other fires were still blazing around Bunnell, a lumber town in Flagler County, and in Volusia County west of Daytona Beach.

Although thunderstorms offered temporary relief, Geiger cautioned: “You’ve got to consider the extent of the drought here. These showers don’t mean a thing when the rain stops.”

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How dry is it in Florida during what should be the third month of the rainy season? According to a drought index, the soil moisture level is just shy of the point where Florida could be classified a desert. “We’ve got a very unfortunate situation which we may not see again, “ said Donald L. Rockwood, a forest geneticist at the University of Florida.

More than 300 fire engines, hundreds of bulldozers and 120 aircraft have arrived to help firefighters. Many of those reinforcements are veterans of memorable blazes in the West, including those in Oakland Hills in 1991 and Yellowstone National Park in 1988.

What they encounter here is not unlike the frequent wildfires of Southern California, where low humidity, strong, unpredictable winds and dry vegetation often lead to disaster.